I've seen discussion on this subject appearing in quite a few places, so I thought I'd try to get it consolidated somewhat.

Fleeing a pet battle will no longer despawn the pet that was being battled, but doing so will now inflict some damage on the fleeing pet battle team.

Disconnecting from a pet battle will once again respawn the pets you were fighting.

Any pet that has been killed in a pet battle will now never respawn.

The first one seems like a good change to me. I admit that I've done this a lot while searching for a particular rare. It's a good way to power through a bunch of spawns. With the change, you can still forfeit matches to check for a rare, but if you want to remove the spawns, you'll actually have to do some battles. It also puts some diminishing returns on forfeiting by damaging your team. I really felt that something like this needed to be implemented.

The second one is a very good one. Being disconnected while trying to cap that rare you've been searching for for hours shouldn't make you want to punch through your monitor.

The third one really confuses me and it will need to be tested when the PTR opens. I've seen several options as to how this could work.

Option 1: You're fighting a team of two or three pets and defeat the first pet, then flee. The entire team despawns.

Option 2: You're fighting a team of two or three pets and defeat the first pet, then flee. The team respawns, but only has the second and/or third pet.

Option 3: You're fighting a team of two or three pets and defeat the first pet, then flee. The team respawns, but the first pet is different. The first pet could be a different rarity or breed of the same pet, or a different pet entirely.

I believe option 1 is the most likely and option 2 is the least likely. Option 3 has a lot of potential to be the best, depending on how it works. If it keeps the same pet, but changes breed/rarity, it would become the absolute best way to farm for battle pets.

Fleeing a pet battle will no longer despawn the pet that was being battled, but doing so will now inflict some damage on the fleeing pet battle team.

We have umpteen lvl 25s by now. If I want to forfeit my way through a field of paws, I'll just set up 5 or 10 capture teams and swap between them after forfeits. This change is silly and just adds annoyance. It doesn't prevent rare hunters from despawning all the available pets.

Also, the various master tamers are collateral damage. I forfeit often on tamers to get the first pet to be the one I want; now I'll have to forfeit and bandage before restarting, or else waste a turn swapping pets.

Poofah wrote:It doesn't prevent rare hunters from despawning all the available pets.

How does it not? The problem with forfeit rare hunting was that it despawned the pets in the process. With this change the pets won't despawn despite players forfeiting. The only way to despawn them would be to kill them with player attacks/spells or battle them to the death.

I'm not sure what will happen if you defeat the primary pet in a battle and then forfeit. Perhaps it will respawn the same pet but of different breed/quality each time. That will also help with rare hunters and the need to despawn/respawn certain critters.

Poofah wrote:Also, the various master tamers are collateral damage. I forfeit often on tamers to get the first pet to be the one I want; now I'll have to forfeit and bandage before restarting, or else waste a turn swapping pets.

This is a good point. I do this as well and it's going to be irritating to have to heal up my team after each forfeit. Once the 5.2 PTR opens up and the PTR forums are available, perhaps if we generate enough feedback, they'll change it so that if you forfeit during a Tamer battle, your team doesn't take damage.

I've got to agree that this does nothing to substantially change rare hunting.

So, under the current system, we flee from battles we don't want, the pet despawns, hopefully to be replaced with something better. Under the new system, we'll have to nuke it manually. And we'll be using a team of losers to scout the pets, holding full strength capture team for the good fights, thus rendering the flee damage of no consequence.

Trainer flee needing a bandage, really just an irritant. Did someone think that this change would get us to fight a trainer with a poor match up to start off? Ridiculous. I'm going to us heal pets/bandage/stable master to get a good first match up. Not doing so often means a sure loss, meaning a bandage/heal/stable master, and the wasted time of a losing battle. Ive seen a lot of these kinds of situations, both in game and in RL. Often the question that come to mind is "Are they stupid or do they think we are?"

I could see the change to fleeing a battle not despawning the pet making it much easier for a lot of people to pick up the overcamped pets. Currently, if you want a Minfernal or a Scourged Whelp, you have to be extremely lucky and be there when they spawn. The spawns are almost always immediately battled, and no matter the quality, are gone forever. I could possibly see a poor or common Minfernal lasting quite awhile as it's battled a few times, yet left alone, since it's not an upgrade for someone. The Scourged Whelpling might not be as lucky this way, as it's the highest level undead wild pet, and the most likely to drop a battle-stone. Hopefully there's some consideration for those who've never had the chance to get some of these pets when entering a battle and seeing no reason to capture it.

I don't really mind any of these changes - there should be some small penalty for running away (and the only thing that I think would be better than damage for running would be a chance that you'll be trapped in the battle - like pokemon), except for trainer battles. Depends on how much damage you take.... 1% of max health seems to not be that bad.

It's good that pets don't despawn after you flee and it will be interesting to see how the 'kill a pet and then flee' thing will work out.

Poofah wrote:It doesn't prevent rare hunters from despawning all the available pets.

How does it not? The problem with forfeit rare hunting was that it despawned the pets in the process. With this change the pets won't despawn despite players forfeiting. The only way to despawn them would be to kill them with player attacks/spells or battle them to the death.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I just assumed that the 2nd step for any rare hunter would be to manually kill the pet after forfeiting, as Vicegrips said. It's the most logical course of action, since we know that despawning it will increase the chance that a rare shows up later. For the same reason, I have a hard time seeing Minfernals lasting more than a few seconds after somebody finds out it's not something they want to capture.

Poofah wrote:It doesn't prevent rare hunters from despawning all the available pets.

How does it not? The problem with forfeit rare hunting was that it despawned the pets in the process. With this change the pets won't despawn despite players forfeiting. The only way to despawn them would be to kill them with player attacks/spells or battle them to the death.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I just assumed that the 2nd step for any rare hunter would be to manually kill the pet after forfeiting, as Vicegrips said. It's the most logical course of action, since we know that despawning it will increase the chance that a rare shows up later. For the same reason, I have a hard time seeing Minfernals lasting more than a few seconds after somebody finds out it's not something they want to capture.

I guess it will help with pets such as minfernal. Personally I would atleast save it for fellow pet collectors if I were looking for a rare minfernal and found a common one. In search for rare pets that are not camped constantly this change will do nothing.

Poofah wrote:It doesn't prevent rare hunters from despawning all the available pets.

How does it not? The problem with forfeit rare hunting was that it despawned the pets in the process. With this change the pets won't despawn despite players forfeiting. The only way to despawn them would be to kill them with player attacks/spells or battle them to the death.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I just assumed that the 2nd step for any rare hunter would be to manually kill the pet after forfeiting, as Vicegrips said. It's the most logical course of action, since we know that despawning it will increase the chance that a rare shows up later. For the same reason, I have a hard time seeing Minfernals lasting more than a few seconds after somebody finds out it's not something they want to capture.

This could very well be a common occurrence after the change. Players simply manually killing the pet if it's not what they're looking for.

But I think developers are hoping that we'll be more inclined to battle and/or capture instead of simply killing an undesired quality pet. Or leave it for someone else. With the implementation of Battle-Stones, it seems like the desired mentality is that everyone should want to catch a pet regardless of the quality, and then simply upgrade it later. And if not, let someone else have a chance at it.

Unfortunately, not everyone sees it this way, so there will be situations where players end up killing all the pets in their hunt for a specific rare pet. I don't think this is preventable, though, and will happen no matter what changes are implemented.

That being said, these changes do pose an irritable (and possibly unnecessary) mechanic for those with an opposing mentality to that which is desired by developers. (This is all just my opinion and views on the situation based on observation. I have no concrete idea what developers desire for us and their thoughts on the matter.)

It played out sort of like this: somebody mentioned using 'the DC trick' to respawn a pet they had accidentally killed while trying to capture; Mumper asked 'what's the DC trick', and got an answer; shortly thereafter we got the hotfix to prevent respawning after DC; then they reversed course somewhat and we got the present patch notes. So, I'd guess that the main intent is to prevent second chances at capturing. Saving a rare for a friend or leaving lower quality pets up for others seems to have been collateral damage, and the patch notes indicate that they're fine with these.

As far as forcing us to finish battles, they could always make wild pets non-attackable. Then we'd have to kill them in a pet battle to despawn them. But if they want to preserve the risk of killing a desired pet while trying to capture it, then I'm going to guess that they want to preserve the risk of losing a pet to random AoE too.

It's always been my personal policy to log out from a battle if there's a blue pet that I already have (the blue of), but the last couple of times I've done that, the whole team has despawned. It's a bit crappy if you can't even be nice and leave a rare that you already have for someone else. I thought the team was despawning as well still if I forfeited, which I often do when they're all grey or white... I think of that as more of a public service than anything else. So are they supposed to be staying in the field or despawning after all (because they do seem to be despawning when I've fought them)?

On the accidental kill thing, I always thought it was intended, since it's so obvious I thought they must already have tested for it and left it that way on purpose. I can understand why they've "fixed" it, but gee, I liked the dc method for accidental kills... sad to see it go.